Approximately five years ago, the Danville Life Saving & First Aid Crew, Inc. (DLSC) began work on a program that would allow our organization to run more advanced electrocardiograms (“EKG’s”) in the field.

Over the past 33 years, DLSC had the ability to do 3-Lead EKG’s in the field and transmit the results over a special radio frequency. This worked fine for recognizing and treating abnormal heart rhythms, but offered little in the line of recognizing an actual heart attack, let alone on how to set forth to treat it.

Over the past five years, this technology has become obsolete. The current “Standard of Care” is to provide a 12-lead electrocardiogram…the exact same diagnostic capability that is found in hospitals. The first step of this process was to update our equipment. A grant from the Community Foundation of the Dan River Region helped purchase these 12-lead machines. The DLSC was able to raise the remainder of the necessary funds to make these purchases.

In conjunction with DRMC and Duke University, the “STEMI” program was initiated. The acronym stands for ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction. Basically, a STEMI is a heart attack that the 12 lead machines are able to recognize based on tell-tale EKG changes. The old technology and machines could not differentiate, so we could not recognize, let alone treat this condition. Up to this point, we could only treat the “side effects”(irregular heart rhythms, not the disease (a clot cutting off oxygen and blood flow to a particular part of the heart muscle).

Training has begun in conjunction with DRMC and Duke University. In addition to training the Advanced Life Support (ALS) providers, we have begun to train the Basic Life Support (BLS) providers to attach the machine to their patient in preparation for the ability to transmit this 12-lead EKG to the hospital. The idea of this is to give the hospital the “heads-up” so they can mobilize the STEMI Team. Once the patient arrives at the hospital, he/she goes directly to the cardiac catherization lab and the obstruction in the arteries of the heart removed!

Studies have shown that having a program like this readily available to the citizens of our community saves lives. Time equals heart muscle in a heart attack. This speeds up the recognition process so the patient can go directly to treatment.

The final communication pieces are hopefully being put into place soon. This program should be in full operation by the early 2012. DRMC has committed to purchase the LifeNet program that allows transmission of 12-lead EKG’s to the hospital and local cardiologists. Each individual squad will have to purchase the modems and data plan that match this software.

Training on 12-lead EKG recognition will continue to run in full force until that time, and will continue to be offered (required) on an on-going basis. This will run about eight (8) hours every quarter for every member of DLSC, covering everything from application and operation of the machine, to technical training on EKG recognition and interpretation.